George Kittle is out for the year with an Achilles injury. That puts Jake Tonges back in the spotlight as perhaps the sneaky tight end value for the divisional round.
The matchup, admittedly, is lousy. Seattle’s defense is playing lights out right now, and it never looked better than when bullying the 49ers in Week 18. The hope would be that the 49ers will be better in this one, through some combination of Kyle Shanahan coming up with some adjustments, the 49ers getting Trent Williams back and perhaps the Seahawks showing up flat or overconfident.
With the Kittle injury, the 49ers will be using Tonges at tight end, and he’s been surprisingly serviceable in that role. Back in Week 1, recall, San Francisco won at Seattle. Kittle was knocked out of that game in the second quarter, and Tonges caught 3 passes while filling in, including the game-winning touchdown late.
Tonges has had six opportunities this year to fill in for a full game with Kittle out, and there have been more hits than misses, with 29 catches for 269 yards and 3 TDs – that’s 4.8 catches for 45 yards, on average.
Tonges has scored in three of the last four games Kittle has missed, and he’s caught at least 6 passes in his last three such games. Tonges wasn’t a factor at Philadelphia, catching only 1 pass.
While Tonges isn’t as talented as Kittle and doesn’t do the ridiculous “Cero Miedo” wrist flip after his receptions, he looks like an adequate enough fill-in guy. The matchups aren’t fully set up yet, but I expect I will be projecting Tonges higher than the starting tight ends on most of the other seven teams. Loveland and Henry will be above him, I think, and maybe Schultz if he’s still around. Maybe maybe not anyone else.
| TONGES FILLING IN FOR KITTLE | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opp | Result | Tgt | No | Yds | Avg | TD |
| at N.O. | W, 26-21 | 5 | 4 | 31 | 7.8 | 0 |
| Ariz. | W, 16-15 | 3 | 2 | 21 | 10.5 | 0 |
| Jac. | L, 21-26 | 5 | 3 | 58 | 19.3 | 1 |
| at LAR | W, 26-23 | 11 | 7 | 41 | 5.9 | 1 |
| at T.B. | L, 19-30 | 7 | 6 | 58 | 9.7 | 0 |
| Chi. | W, 42-38 | 9 | 7 | 60 | 8.6 | 1 |
| Total | -- | 40 | 29 | 269 | 9.3 | 3 |
—Ian Allan